Systems of Ethics

How do you decide what is right and what is wrong?  Do you think that 'right' and 'wrong' exist as absolute, objective things that are beyond revision?  Do you think that they are given to us, perhaps by a creator, or do you think that humans define their own morals?

Tough questions.  They may not pop into your mind often, but they have increasingly been appearing in mine.

I have been giving some consideration to what I think is right and wrong, but more consideration still to how it is that I should determine what is right and wrong.  Perhaps you live your life according to a list of set in stone rules or maxims, like 'thou shall not kill/ steal', etc.

After a little consideration, any list of absolute rules soon reveals itself as insufficient.  Even common sense, fundamental rules that may seem unarguable or uncontroversial at first, soon crumble when applied to real life circumstances.  Let's take a simple premise such as 'it is wrong to kill'.  Soldiers cannot live by any such rule and yet they are not, generally, considered evil or immoral.  The rule is too general as it is in this form, think about the number of animals killed for human consumption, a good deal of people don't see this as wrong.  We may think we can strengthen the rule by adding some qualification or other, so how about 'it is wrong to kill an innocent human being'.  Now this does sound more sturdy. Don't agree too quickly, though. It may be a few moments before you can imagine an objection to this, but there are situations in which it may not apply.  What if an innocent human being is living in constant, debilitating pain?  If the person is of sound mind, but their life is devoid of any pleasure and they would prefer non-existence to perpetual agony, would our surely stated premise hold?  I don't think it would.  I don't think it would be wrong to kill an innocent human being in this circumstance.

A system of ethics where the individual relies on a set of rules may be referred to as Deontological ethics.  It is adherence to the rule or maxim that is important and determines whether one's action is right or wrong.

This isn't a system I am happy to use.  Although we may not often find ourselves in opposition to such rules as 'it is wrong to kill an innocent human being', it is clear that rules are unlikely ever to apply absolutely, in all circumstances.

So, having decided that Deontological ethics is not for us, where might we turn?  Well, what about if we consider the effect of our actions or decisions to be the important thing?  What if we judge our actions by the consequences to which they give rise?  If we think this sounds a little better, we may have some sympathy with a consequentialist approach to ethics and we may be interested in Utilitarianism.

Utilitarianism has many forms, but put in its classical form it judges actions as right or wrong by reference to the pleasure / pain or happiness / misery that they create. There are variations of Utilitarianism, just as there are versions of Deontological ethics, but the fundamental or classical form of utilitarianism is as stated above.  The first thing a Utilitarian approach does is to cut us free from the shackles of strict rules, which can never be universally applied in our grey, rather than black and white world and lives.

By considering what may be the outcome of various actions, weighing up which action will do the most good or cause the least pain/misery, we allow ourselves to me much more flexible in our judgements.  Nothing is wrong by rule, but anything may be wrong by consequence.

Various thought experiments have been used over the years to test an ethical system.  There are several variations of the following scenario:

A train is hurtling down a track, completely out of control and on a collision course with a group of 5 people, which it will reach in very short time.  As an observer of the incident some distance away, there is only 1 thing you can do to change the course of events, since you are not close enough to contact the people.  There is a switch near the train line that you could throw, which would have the effect of changing the course of the train to a side track.  On the side track 1 person is walking along, oblivious to events taking place.  What should you do?

Observing any deontology that requires you not to kill a human being would mean that you are powerless to change events and 5 people will die.  However, a utilitarian ethic would allow you to throw the switch, which would prevent the loss of 5 lives at the expense of 1.

You may not be happy about either of these outcomes and may feel that either result will be tragic.  You should.  However, I think it is possible to make a strong argument to suggest that a utilitarian approach of some kind suggests you should strongly consider throwing the switch. 

A utilitarian would agree that all persons have a value. Therefore the death of 1 million people is not just quantatively different from the death of 1 person, but also qualitatively different, by virtue of the quantity of people, each of whom has a value.  This shouldn't be controversial.  Our newspapers report air crash disasters, natural disasters, etc. on the front page.  When somebody dies crossing the road, this is tragic, but it is not generally found on the front of our national newspapers.  Therefore, without taking lightly the value of any individual's life, we might agree that 1,000,000 people dying is a worse result (involving more pain / misery by accumulation) than the sad death of 1 person.  This is an objective view, one we may take if we imagine ourselves observing the world as a disconnected 3rd party.  In life, obviously, we can only see through our own eyes and our subjective preferences for family members, friends, partners, etc., obviously mean that we place a premium value on certain people, but we can agree that objectively one person has a value equal to that of another.

So, if we agree that the death of 1,000,000 people is a worse consequence than the death of 1, we should agree that the death of 5 is worse than the death of 1, albeit by a smaller margin.  5 people suffering pain/misery/death is a worse outcome than 1 suffering the same.  As a utilitarian is interested in consequences of actions, the action that increases the overall happiness/pleasure and the least pain/misery, we can see that they might decide to throw the switch. 

The argument could be stated even more strongly.  Since a utilitarian framework is interested in consequences, little distinction may be made between act and omission.  Since it is a choice to do nothing, rather than throw the switch, and this choice brings about more pain/misery - the worst outcome - then a utilitarian may charge somebody who fails to act as being responsible for the greater tragedy.

You may think that you would be incapable of throwing the switch, since you would then be positively doing something that brings about the death of a person.  Maybe you wouldn't be able to do it and maybe neither would I, but that does not mean that utilitarianism is wrong or bad.  Maybe it just means that we couldn't do the right thing.  Maybe we wouldn't have what it takes.  Maybe this is because the sanctity of human life and the wrongness of killing have always been taught to us as an absolute rule.  But we have seen that the difference between act and omission in this scenario is the difference between a tragedy and a bigger tragedy.

Let’s modify the scenario.  What if the train is full of 1,000 people, headed for another train coming in the other direction, which also holds 1,000 people.  Unless we throw the switch to divert it to a side track, where it will kill a lone person strolling obliviously, 2000 people will die.  Given a choice of 2000 lives and 1, do you find the decision comes any easier?  Extrapolate it however you want, make the numbers as big as you want.  Even if you have to imagine that millions die at the expense of 1 before you would choose to positively act to kill 1 person, you are acknowledging that more people dying is a worse outcome than fewer; each life has equal value and therefore the act that is 'right' according to the consequences it creates, is the act to positively kill somebody.

I have been at pains to describe how and why the utilitarian might decide to kill someone, since it brings about the best consequences.  The consequences in this scenario are limited to 2 outcomes and both are bad.  The scenario isn't practical and isn't likely to be something one ever faces in life, but it is a dilemma that has been used as a thought experiment in some form or other for years.

You may think it a criticism of a utilitarian system of ethics that such a thing as killing is ever allowed. The example we've seen is extreme and both outcomes are bad, needless to say if an option existed to save all, this is what the utilitarian would choose.  However, just because something may seem intuitively wrong or traditionally wrong, our inquiry shouldn't stop there.  Ethics is something to think about and something to which we should apply reason.  Judging by your gut may not be the best thing.  Maybe your intuition will normally serve you well and generally result in the best outcome.  In more everyday matters I expect it will, but never let it go unchecked- serious things deserve serious consideration. 

Why I don't Eat other Animals

Quite recently, I decided not to eat meat. I struggled with the decision for a few weeks, having been a fairly enthusiastic carnivore for all of my previous 30 years, before deciding that being a vegetarian, a term I don't like all that much, was the morally correct thing to do.

I want to summarise my thought process when coming to this decision; to outline the dissonance that I was trying to resolve. You see, I didn't want, from a purely selfish point of view, to stop eating meat. I enjoyed eating nearly all types of meat and didn't even think, at the time, that I actually liked many vegetables. The basis of my decision and my objection to eating meat was entirely moral and, although I don't want to be seen as painting myself as courageous, it is the kind of decision that I think people might be tempted to defer indefinitely, as it involved an immediate sacrifice on my part, a change to my everyday life that I was making because I felt I had to, more than I wanted to at the time.

I can't tell you exactly what was the trigger, the thing that made me question my meat-eating and ask myself whether it was 'right'. I can tell you that I have always loved nature and animals and abhorred cruelty to them. I started to mull over the fact that I love the two dog members of our family as much as could be imagined, but that I would happily tuck in to a roasted piece of animal at the weekend, an animal that shared at least some characteristics with our 'pets' and probably a similar level of sentience; an animal that almost certainly experiences physical pain in a very similar way to us and whose instinct would ensure that it would fight to the very end in order to cling on to its life.

During the couple of weeks after first considering this, I avoided meat products and thought things through. I wanted to make sure that this was the right thing to do and was something that I thought was unavoidable, such was the difference I felt it would make to my everyday life. I began by tackling what I thought were all the common pro-meat arguments, the arguments I had all too easily assumed reasonable if the topic of vegetarianism came up previous to my serious consideration of my position, some of which, I am now ashamed to say, I have probably even uttered in my defence. Although I feel differently now, at the time I think part of me was hoping that I would find an argument reasonable enough to allow me to continue eating meat, but, as you will see, that proved harder than I thought.

Argument number 1: We are Designed to Eat Meat. This sounds quite attractive at first. Humans have been designed to eat meat with sharp incisor teeth for cutting, a digestion that will cope with flesh and so on. Of course, we have already discussed the illusion of design in other posts. Assuming you accept Evolution by Natural Selection as the 'designer', rather than a supernatural creator (and you should), the argument must be stated quite differently: we haven't been designed to eat meat, but our bodies have become adapted to eating meat since it has proved a successful strategy for our ancestors to be carnivorous. In other words, those ancestors of ours that ate meat were at a competitive advantage and it was their genes that became disproportionately represented in the gene pool, hence adaptations such as sharp teeth.

Darwinian Selection has nothing to say on morals. It tells us only what was successful previously and has no preference about 'right' and 'wrong'; it simply selects what works. It may have been a successful strategy for example, earlier on in our ancestry, for men to pounce on women and force them to copulate. It is not hard to imagine, since it was only from the beginning of the nineteenth century that women's rights movements began to argue that it was possible for a man to rape his wife. This was seen as legally impossible at the time, such were a man's conjugal rights. With abortion being a relatively recent process, it seems hard to imagine that there wasn't a time where this would have happened as I imagine it would have been a successful strategy, although something we would obviously now condemn.

So, because we have done something in the past, because our bodies have become adapted to allow us to eat meat, has no contribution to the argument of whether we should eat meat.

Argument number 2: Other Animals Eat Meat, Why Shouldn't We? I consider this argument less appealing than the one we have just discussed. It is true, lots of animals are carnivorous and seek their nutrition through the killing and devouring of other animals. We are part of a food chain and we have the physical tools that allow us to eat meat. But, and this is a big but, we set different moral standards for ourselves than we do other animals. It might be said that humans have a higher level of sentience than other animals, even than other higher mammals such as apes. Maybe we have a higher developed consciousness and sense of self. We could discuss these things at some length, but it's the consequence of this line of reasoning that I wish to use as my point. When a dog bites another dog, we don't charge it with assault. We don't put non-human animals to trial. We don't expect other animals to behave as we do.

The human animal is capable of a range of faculty not open to other animals, whether this makes us special or not is another argument, I would however argue that it places on us an altogether higher level of responsibility and accountability. If we can contrive such things as morals, principles, laws and so on, then it is our duty to follow them.

So, while I may not relish the fact that a lion is at this moment squeezing the neck of an antelope so as to crush it's windpipe, before tearing it's flesh to pieces, I wouldn't subject the lion to the same moral standards as I would myself. For the lion, this way of life is essential to its survival, for me it is not.

Argument number 3: We Must Eat Meat in order to be Healthy. I'm not even sure how wide spread this myth is anymore, but it is something that was suggested to me when I revealed my decision to some people. Meat is convenient in that it contains a full range of amino acids and may be considered a complete protein. Certain vegetables that are high in protein will be deficient as far as a couple of these amino acids are concerned and therefore might not be considered as complete a protein. All that it is necessary for the non-meat eater to do, is combine certain complementary food groups, so that by overlapping certain food items throughout the course of a day, the full range of amino acids are ingested. This is all that is required.

Argument number 4: Why Should We Care about Animals? Some people don't share my opinion and, although I wish that they did, I have to accept that not everybody feels the same towards non-human (or even human) animals as I do. I have a simple way of looking at this that might not be persuasive to everybody, but it helps me put things into context. Consider which animals you may be prepared to eat. Most people wouldn't be happy to eat another human, although, of course, there are exceptions in some parts of the world. However, the consensus in the 'civilised' world seems to be that cannibalism is taboo. Would you eat an ape? An animal that shares 99. whatever % of our genome. Apes have been seen to display a range of emotions, including bereavement emotions of yearning and mourning. They experience pain in a very similar way to us. You soon realise, as you go through any list of animals, all of which are related to every other animal on the planet including us, that there is a continuum of sentience. I'm not going to try and argue that eating a pig is like eating a human family member, but it is possible to draw a line of relation from you to that pig, although the line would be much longer and would take a less linear path than would the line to a human family member.

The arbitrary lines we draw, which are often cultural, between our love of domestic animals such as dogs, and our factory farming and mass slaughter of other animals of similar intelligence, such as pigs, seems to reveal a hypocritical, non-thinking and non-caring attitude towards non-human animals on the whole.

As a 'higher' mammal, I feel a level of relatedness to other animals and I feel my position is a privileged one. I have no natural predators (although humans do a good enough job of predating each other) and I can choose how I act towards other animals with no other immediate consequences, in the main, than the effect on my conscience. I do feel a sense of duty to all fellow animals.

Another thought exercise worth considering is this: imagine if a super intelligent alien life form, one that considered us just a stupid animal and entirely separate from them, came to earth. Imagine that we were the equivalent of a pig or a sheep to this uber-intelligent life form. What if they decided that they would eat us? What if we were in the position of the pig, unable to communicate with the aliens, but just as able to feel pain, fear and a sense of self-preservation? Well, our fate would be the same as the pig, we could only hope that the aliens would feel a moral obligation towards us and would not be happy simply to farm us for food and produce.

There are of course many arguments one can consider, but these are the major ones that spring to my mind. When deciding exactly what I felt that I could eat, my main considerations were a life form's ability to feel pain and level of self-awareness. I have decided that I will not eat fish, which I know is something that some vegetarians are happy to do. I’m not sure why, probably they reason that fish are the equivalent of swimming vegetables, with small brains and little or no ability to feel pain.

So, getting to the point of my stance and why I have taken it. I resolved that because I am able to satisfy my nutrition and my hunger without eating meat, then the only reasons that I would continue to eat meat are due to matters of convenience or palate. I decided that these were not good enough reasons to eat other animals. My vegetarianism is emphatically about choice; because I live at a time and in a place where I have a choice of whether I eat meat, and because I will suffer no ill effects that may be considered serious in not eating meat, morally, this leaves me with little choice!

There are some differences between my position and what may be considered the ‘mainstream’ position. For example, if animals lived free lives and died natural deaths, I would have no quarrel with then eating them. Of course, this would not satisfy the demand of the human consumer and the meat would be old and probably not considered good. Likewise, if, or maybe when would be putting it better, scientists are able to culture animal meat in the lab, meat with no sentience or mind attached to it, I would have no objection to eating it.

I don’t want to be an evangelist in my vegetarianism, but I did want to put my thoughts down in writing and see how reasonable my position sounded. I can’t honestly say that I would be disappointed if this piece prompted others to consider theirs.

Pascal's Wager

In some of my previous posts, I have briefly considered a couple of the more common religious arguments. I have focused on the argument from design, which is countered by the theory of evolution and I have also considered the argument from morality, which is juxtaposed with the problem of evil. We have also seen that morality can be explained without reference to the supernatural.

Evolution and the problem of evil are what I consider to be the strongest objections to all of the brands of religion that I have encountered. These are the two most powerful motivations for my atheism and the latter accounts for some of the passion you may perceive in the exposition of my arguments challenging religion. It is fair to say that I would have less argument with the deist, but at best I consider his god superfluous.

There are other arguments that we can consider. One that you may or may not be familiar with is known as 'Pascal's Wager'. I will briefly outline it.

Blaise Pascal was a mathematician who created the following wager- if you believe in god, that which you stand to gain if you are correct is enormous in relation to that which you have to lose if you are wrong, which is nothing. Pascal argued that if you live your life as an unbeliever and are correct, then death is final and after it you will cease to exist in any form, therefore you will have lost nothing. However if you are incorrect, you will be risking entry to heaven and an eternal life, things available only to the pious. Worse still, you may even be headed for somewhere such as purgatory or hell. Whereas, if you live your life as a believer and are incorrect you will die and your death will be final, you will know nothing and you will have lost nothing, just as the un-believer. However, and this is the lynch-pin of the proposition, if you live your life as a believer and are correct, you stand to gain far greater than you lose, for you may go to heaven and live eternally.

I suspect that Pascal’s wager wasn’t put forward as a serious proposition for being religious, but I do not know. I do know that it is cited as a common argument for belief in god.

The proposition does have a mathematical feel about it. It is an argument based on probability and the benefit to loss ratio involved in living your life as a believer and it does, for a moment, draw you to feel that the wager represents perfect logic. However after a little consideration, you will discover some problems with the wager.

Firstly, despite the delights available to the believer upon death, I find it hard to believe that one could grasp religious faith by the horns solely on this basis. Could one truly believe only in an effort to acquire the benefits of being a believer? You may start going to church, singing hymns and you may even start praying, however this does not mean that you will acquire a sincere belief in god. The wager itself does not provide any further evidence in favour of god existing, but merely proposes that the gain associated with being a believer far outweighs the loss. Could you believe on this basis only, especially if you already had doubts about the existence of god previous to ‘hedging your bets’ as suggested in the wager? I think that the best that may be mustered is a kind of lip-service belief offered only in an effort to secure a life after death.

Now, surely any god who has the properties as those that are suggested in many a holy book, such as omniscience, would be able to see the moral treachery committed by the ‘believer’. Surely god would tell instantly that the individual did not truly believe, but had acted only in a sycophantic kind of hedge betting so as to secure their own gain.

Also, the proposition does require that a believer also wagers heavily on the premise that any god who may exist places a high value on the belief of his flock. It assumes that the gates of heaven will be open to individuals who have managed to live their lives as believers. If a god did exist, he, she or it may place higher value on qualities such as sound reasoning, intellectual honesty and respect of evidence. Surely this god would praise the atheist for using the grey matter with which they had endowed them and reward their effort to make sense of the world around them to the best of their ability. Maybe it is people with these qualities who would be allowed entry into heaven, not those equipped with devout faith or those paying lip service in the form of worship to a god in whom they don’t really believe.

I do not find the wager very persuasive and recognise that many believers do not base their faith on this kind of cost / benefit premise, although I am sure that there are some who do. This argument is simply a proposition and an attempt to make belief a logical position. It adds nothing in terms of evidence and it soon becomes clear to us that human thoughts and feelings, and indeed belief, cannot be dealt with exactly as you would numbers in a sum or calculation.

Thoughts on Purpose

Questions like 'What is the purpose of life?', 'What is our purpose?' are interesting discussion points. Questions like these have occurred to us all as we grow up and analyse the world in which we live and as we try to define a sense of self.

It was a question which I considered for a time, but I have since come to regard it as less important, or one might even say less valid a question than I had once regarded it. I consider this to be a natural effect of being an atheist. Let me explain why.

First of all, I think it is necessary to establish that there may be said to be different kinds of purpose. The first may be thought of as utilitarian kind of purpose. For example, we might say that the purpose of a wing is to enable the body to which it is attached to fly. Clearly it has been shaped by natural selection so as to be very good at just this particular task. We could attribute similar senses of purpose to the eye, or we might say that the purpose of a saw is to cut wood.

The second kind of meaning that is often intended by the word purpose relates to something different. It has more to do with destiny and has a feeling of intent or planning about it. Many would consider the answer 'procreation' as insufficient when dealing with the question - 'What is the purpose of life? when we are using this definition.

I have come to think that purpose of the first kind given above is the only worthwhile way of asking the question. Throughout this piece I will refer to the definitions of purpose above as type 1 and type 2 respectively.

A lot of people would be happy in answering certain questions assuming that the purpose referred to is that of type 1. Few arguments would be raised if we stated the purpose of a hammer is to knock nails into wood, the purpose of a saw is to cut wood etc. You will notice that the examples used so far are inanimate objects designed by humans. There may be some objections if we use this definition of purpose when it comes to living animals. We can use type 1 for wings, eyes and hands, but as soon as we begin to talk of an entity as a whole, a dog, a cat or a human, this definition becomes less satisfactory for some.

However unsatisfactory we may find answers of the type 1 variety for such profound questions as 'What is the purpose of life', I find the question far more valid when assuming that the purpose referred to is that of definition 1.

I haven't been very thorough in my definition 2 of purpose, but that is because it is mysterious and may not be the same for everybody. Suffice to say that implicit within this classification is that that the purpose has been planted and forms part of a plan or prophecy of some kind; the purpose has been built-in. Similar to the way in which a hammer has been built to hammer nails into wood, the purpose is part of its make-up, but is different from the utilitarian type of purpose. the purpose of our legs is to propel us, our hands to grip and hold, but the purpose of our living, the purpose of life, what kind of answer can one give?

Well, as I hinted earlier, I think the question can only be valid given certain underlying assumptions. Ask a theist, agnostic or an atheist 'What is the purpose of a rock?' and, assuming that we are talking of type 2 purpose, all will probably reply the same - it has no purpose. The purpose of a rock placed behind a door may be a door stop, placed in a wall it may be a building block, or dropped on somebody's head it may be a murder weapon; but these would all be type 1 definitions and are of the utilitarian type. We don't assume that the rock has any intrinsic, underlying and deeper purpose in life. We don't assume this as we think the rock inert, unconcious and insignificant in life.

'What is the purpose of a rock?', is not a valid question when using purpose type 2. I don’t believe that 'What is the purpose of my life?', or 'What is the purpose of life?' are any more valid when using purpose in this sense. It may be unsatisfactory, but the best answer to these questions may actually be 'to procreate', at least this is the best question to the question in the only sense I think we can ask it (type 1).

The reason why I think this, concerns the underlying assumptions that are necessary to make the question valid in a type 2 sense. If you believe that you, as a human being, are different from all the other animals on earth, that you were built with an intrinsic purpose and that you were built by somebody or something, who has placed you at the centre of a grand plan - then I can see why you may feel that there is a greater purpose to life.

If you believe, as I do, that you are made up of the same genetic code as all life on earth (there is no reason not to believe this, it has been demonstrated), that human beings evolved through a process of evolution by natural selection and that all life may be explained without reference to the supernatural - then you may feel that the question is invalid.

It is only when you see yourself as you see the hammer, as something designed with a pre-defined purpose in mind, that you may feel that the question has meaning.

I consider myself part of the plethora of life on earth and not apart or separate from it. Just because evolution has endowed me with consciousness and intelligence of a kind not demonstrated by other animals, I do not think that this means that I have a soul and that other animals do not and I don't think that I can be said to have any more purpose than any other living animal.

Morality Without God

Do you believe that you need to be commanded to be good? Do you believe in 'good' and 'evil' as absolute, objective concepts defined by a supernatural entity? I don't.

I believe that our notion of good and bad can be explained rationally, without reference to the supernatural. I also believe that the atheist can be seen to have the moral advantage when compared to the religious believer.

Before I outline what I believe, let me explain what I mean when I refer to the concepts of good and evil within a religious context. As far as I have seen, although there may be rare exceptions, religion considers good and evil to be the whim of god. They are not defined by humans, we must accept them as outside of us, as absolutes that escape our revision. Good is good, not because it is - because of any characteristics we naturally associate with goodness, or because we think it is, by reasoning or instinct, but because god says that it is. Good doesn't have to be that which we think is good, it may even be that which we think is evil, its only qualifier is that god says it is good. For instance, I don't think it is good, as detailed in a bible story, that Abraham was willing to kill his son, so to prove his loyalty and obedience to god. As far as the religious position goes, I am wrong and god is right. What Abraham did, moreover what he was prepared to do, was 'good'.

It is interesting to consider what might happen if god were to reconsider what is good and what is bad. Imagine if god decided that indiscriminate murder was good. The religious couldn't argue; they accept good and evil as absolutes outside of human revision. But surely god could re-define good and evil, any omnipotent god surely has it within his, her or it's power, only a divine change of opinion is needed.

If religious people believe good and evil are defined by god, then they must concede that they are not absolute terms, but merely that which god likes or abhors. This surely could change. This seems to me to make the definitions of good and evil to be no less arbitrary than if they were decided by humans. In fact it makes them more so, because they are not set by those to whom they apply.

What is wrong with humans deciding for themselves what they consider good and evil? The religious believer may say that this would leave us all drowning in a sea of moral relativism, with no compass by which discern true good and evil. This is another way of saying: we do not know that which is truly good or evil, without being told. This is simply another argument from authority.

Let's get one stumbling block out of the way. I don't care if good and evil are absolute. I don't care if good and evil exist. All that matters, is that humankind, as a whole, define what we mean by 'good' and 'evil' and set our laws accordingly. I don't see any problems on the horizon using this approach. Does this mean that anything may be permitted? No, it doesn't. I suspect that evolution has had a significant part to play in instilling in us all a set of shared morals. It is easy to see, for instance, how evolution may have favoured those who displayed altruism towards kin or close neighbours, so that this became an inherent characteristic within us all.

Good and evil according to the will of god, surely renders the concepts arbitrary, less intrinsic and less satisfying than if they were evolved characteristics that had emerged as a result of social exchange between our ancestors. I believe that good and evil, as concepts, need only mean things that humans agree as broadly beneficial or hurtful to themselves and others, in specific contexts.

The definition of good and evil may shift over time, according to the contemporary cultural zeitgeist, but I don't imagine that what we consider extremely good or extremely evil will ever switch categories. This may not sit easy with some, they may say that certain things are, by their very nature, evil and must be absolutely so. I don't personally find this a big problem, practically, as I find it hard to countenance a world in which the majority of humankind has decided that something such as indiscriminate murder may be considered good. However, even in the extreme examples, it is the context and the consensus which are important. If all humans, or at least a very large majority, consider something to be good or evil - this is what is important. Whether this something is absolutely, objectively good or evil is not significant, particularly if this simply means that which god likes or abhors.

Ask yourself, do you think that something is good because you think that a supernatural authority has told us so, or because you can see that it has a benefit for humankind? Keep in mind that whatever good you are picturing may not fit into both categories.

Needless to say, I don't accept good or evil as absolutes or as divine concepts; I think these are things that we can define for ourselves. I don't worry about the semantics of the words and I don't mind that the definitions are changeable, in fact, I think that this is a good thing. Without revision, the morality of the bible may struggle to deal with things that the modern world has come to accept or come to abhor, such as homosexuality or slavery, for example. A dogmatic and unrevised concept of good and evil does not leave any room for the reconsideration or reshuffling according to social change.

I think the moral atheist, who considers good and evil, broadly speaking, on a benefit vs pain basis in respect of his or her fellow humans; who is good, not as avoidance of hell, or as an aspiration to heaven, but in deepest sincerity and agreement with the wider population, with whom an evolved, fundamental moral base is shared, may make a greater claim to morality than many who act only as a result of commandment from their god.

Evolution and Religion don't mix

I was greeted at my front door early last weekend by a couple of Jehovah's Witnesses. They asked me if God was important to me. I replied with a smile, 'no', and politely took the obligatory 'Watchtower' magazine.

I'm never rude to religious canvassers, despite the juxtaposition of our beliefs. I do not take offence when somebody holds an opinion different from that of my own, but I wonder if I would be greeted with the same politeness if I was to knock on people's doors in an effort to canvass atheist comrades. I am always tempted to invite religious advertisers in for a coffee and a chat about their beliefs. I suppose that in my fantasy I would strip them of their supernatural explanations, with powerful reason and convincing logic. Unfortunately, powerful tools as logic and reason are, they are often rendered useless when used to argue against someone of a faith position. The very nature of religious belief requires a suspension of any natural scepticism and a willingness to believe in things for which there is no or very little evidence, hence 'faith' is required.

Anyway, I flicked through Watchtower and became increasingly irritated. It's clear that Jehovah's Witnesses aren't happy with the theory of evolution, and nor should they be. However, the way they try and deal with this inconvenient (for them) fact, is to completely misrepresent evolution and try and claim their religion as the more rational alternative. They construct a flimsy straw man and then knock it down.

Their position seems to rely heavily on the argument from design. Of all the arguments for religion this may be the most appealing, at least on first inspection. The argument is usually presented as such: Look at this beautiful butterfly (or majestic elephant, or giant redwood, or the human eye or any other complex or beautiful creature or entity), do you believe that this has just sprung into existence, by random chance, rather than designed by god? The answer should be a firm no. Evolution in the form of Darwinian natural selection is not well described by this question, which seeks to misrepresent it entirely.

The argument is really an appeal to ignorance; as soon as one begins to learn about evolution and has a grasp of the basic concept, it is apparent that 'blind chance' is not an accurate description. To see natural selection as the answer to how complex and beautiful animals and organs have come to be, we need only accept that small incremental, adaptive changes have taken place over a huge period of time. Genetic mutations that endow a life form with a competitive advantage mean that the life form is more likely to survive, at least until it has reproduced, and therefore its genes will become disproportionately represented in the gene pool. This is how changes in the characteristics of animals come about and consequently evolution occurs. A complete dissection of evolution would of course require a more thorough explanation, but would also transform this blog into a book. I would recommend 'The Blind Watchmaker', by Richard Dawkins as a good place to start.

The key to evolution is the non-random death of animals as determined by natural selection- as I said, blind chance does not describe the process at work and is a patent mis-selling of the theory.

So, I don't think placing evolution at the unlikely end of the spectrum vs the proposed alternative of a creator god, who punishes sin, answers prayer, cares with whom you have sex, what you eat and so on, is reasonable. With the application of common sense and reasoning alone, it is clear which of the two propositions is the more rational.

Of course, there are religious people who claim that evolution and god are compatible. Or even that evolution is god's work; it is the process god kicked off in order to create us. I don't buy this. Reworking the creation story, Noah's ark and other accounts outlined in the bible in order to accommodate evolution seems too much of a stretch. Why would god 'make man in his image' by a process of natural selection over a period of over 4 billion years?

If a religious person sees evolution as being compatible with their faith and believes that god simply set in place the wheels of motion that started evolution, why is natural selection so merciless? Why do the strong, the predatory and the bullying survive at the expense of the sick, the weak and the lame? If god is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, then why did he, she or it create humans with the potential to kill, steal etc? Surely one has to accept that god either doesn’t exist, or may not be as benevolent as the believer would like to think. Certainly if god has the all-seeing, all-knowing characteristics that we are led to believe, then god must be morally culpable for human sins.

Evolution shows us how organised complexity may develop from very simple beginnings given enough time and because of its cumulative effect. To place a very complex, infinitely intelligent being as the pre-cursor to this process is to skew the argument entirely. It means that god must require an even bigger explanation. Who made god? An infinite regress is the result of this conundrum.

Some religious people will deny almost all of the literal interpretations of the bible stories and obfuscate their definition of god into something that is less substantial than thin air. But this seems like a tactic designed only to allow a version of god to exist in these enlightened times, it certainly does not seem like the god that was described to me as a child and certainly isn't the god projected from the pulpit. Even with the most vague of god interpretations, the least we can claim is that they are unnecessary. God has become superfluous when explaining the natural world.

For me, the understanding of evolution was a mortal blow for religion. I cannot find a satisfactory way of linking the two.

Roman Catholic Church Child Abuse Scandal

I suppose that most people must now be aware of the crisis affecting the Roman Catholic Church at the moment. At least that's the way it's often expressed: '..the crisis affecting the Roman Catholic Church..' or similar. This gives an indication of the attitude that surrounds the whole sordid affair, particularly that voiced by the RCC. It's as if this is something that has just befallen the RCC, something that has been thrust upon them and is now working to destroy their image, which seems to be the principal concern for many of those representing the Vatican.

Let's look at this a little closer and let's consider, whatever our position - atheist, agnostic or believer - what has happened. I have seen several articles that seem to come at things from this kind of angle: paedophiles exist in all walks of life, not just the RCC.. therefore this is not a problem with the church, but specific individuals that, in this case, happen to exist within the clergy.. what are you having a go at the RCC for?!?

This looks ok on first inspection. Well, maybe not ok, but after thinking for oohh, at least 10 seconds, it didn't sit quite right with me. I realised that this is not reasonable argument for several reasons.

1. The RCC supposedly have divine guidance when it comes to their behaviour; they claim to receive moral instruction directly via the inerrant word of god. Indeed a pope is only installed following a meeting of cardinals during which their aim is to divine the will of god. They have many rules, specific doctrine and are passionate about issues incompatible with their dogma ie. same sex marriage, female bishops, contraception, clearly serious issues, to them if nobody else. Surely these are the people of the world that must be 'good'. It is those who are outside of religion, anybody who chooses a moral path other than that drawn by god's own hand, they must all be drowning in a sea of moral relativism, unable to tell what is truly, absolutely right or wrong.

2. Paedophiles do exist in many walks of life, but one might ask whether the discipline of celibacy that priests follow in the RCC, the suppression of one's natural desires, has anything to do with the number of allegations made against the clergy. Believe it or not, I'm not trying to imply the answer with my question, but I feel the question should be asked.

3. I can't think of another institution or organisation that could, or would try and keep the sexual abuse of children by its members a secret. It seems that Cardinal Ratzinger sent a letter to Catholic bishops asking that any child rape or molestation cases were referred directly to his office. Matters were not referred directly to civil authorities, but were kept 'in-house' and there are stories of priests being moved to other parishes when their abuses looked like causing problems at their present location.

I don't enjoy it when people try and force their version of right and wrong down my throat, especially when they claim that their beliefs are endorsed by a particular god. The next time you find yourself being preached to, ask yourself whether the person who is doing it is qualified. Ask yourself whether they are any more able to determine what is right and what is wrong than you are.